


Scourge

by angel1876



Series: Carry On [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Infection, Injury, Overstimulation, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel1876/pseuds/angel1876
Summary: He was used to taking care of young humans.He wasn't used to taking care of them when they were so badly hurt.Takes place in the Carry On universe, but doesn't fit the main story.





	Scourge

**Author's Note:**

> Tw: For Overstimulation and infected wounds.

Scourge had always been an indoor cat.

On top of that, he'd always been in the same house for all his life, since he was a kit.

Right away, that was two reasons for him to hate this trip that the humans insisted they all go on. Something set them off a while back, something that made the air thick with their fear, but he'd always thought that the ongoing absence of danger would calm them down. It didn't. And then, one day, that fear spiked. There'd been a lot of chatter, a lot of arguing, and then everyone gathered their things and set to migrating. 

His human carried him along the way.

Reason number three to hate this: Scourge despised being carried. It was nothing at all against his human, and anyway the boy was only a kit. He just didn't like feeling confined, nor did he like it when too much of his body was pressed on at once.

All in all, he was miserable while they walked. Too open of a place. Too many unfamiliar noises, sights and smells. Oh, the smells. Sometimes it was close, and sometimes it was stale and far away, but everything outside smelled of rot. 

What he wanted most of all was to go back home where it was safe, but it didn't look like they were going to listen to reason. Since turning around wasn't an option, what he wanted was a break from this. To be put down for a while, to gather himself. Just five minutes. Let him go into a corner, groom, get his energy back up. Despite his discomfort, he was gentle in his protests. He squirmed, pushed on his kit's shoulders with his paws, the tips of his claws retracted. He meowed. Long, frustrated vocalizations, mimicking their kitten talk in such a way that he'd hoped they'd understand.

Still, they kept walking. Soon other humans joined them, a mother and kitten. This kit was older than his own, but she was still clinging to her mom, and the tension she seemed to feel from this unfamiliar environment very much mirrored his own. He could relate, and if he wasn't currently dealing with having all his senses assaulted with far too much information at once, he would have felt for her more.

His kit was vocalizing at her, and received little response in turn. She wasn't joining in. 

For a while it went on like that, every human ignoring him. His tail thrashed, his ears laying flat. He meowed as loudly as he could...

And then he was on the ground. Relief flooded every inch of him from nose-tip to tail as he dove into a secluded spot between a dumpster and a wall. Only after he was there, only after he'd let out a quiet sigh, did he hear screaming. Turning, peering out from the corner, he saw the crowd. They looked like humans, but they didn't move right, and they sounded worse. They were everywhere, and they were looming in on his group. His kit, his terrified kit, he caught sight of him trying to go for the dumpster, only to be dragged back. 

Scourge pressed himself into the ground, suddenly wanting to rejoin them, but too overwhelmed to leave his spot now that he was in it. The monsters were everywhere, and soon they stood between him and his group, cutting them off. Forcing the humans back and away.

His kit was running away, and he couldn't follow.

The mother called out, alarm in her voice, his only warning before fingers curled tightly into his scruff. With a sharp tug, he was lifted up, up into the air, the skin at his back pulled painfully tight by his own weight. Not a kitten anymore, and though his scruff was still there, he was no longer meant to be lifted by it. A hiss spat out at the handler, but she was already wrapping him up in her arms, letting go of the back of his neck so as to grip him to her chest. It was better than her previous hold, but he'd still not had a chance to recover, and the monsters were still coming for them.

He was in the arms of the other kit. She turned, darting away, getting them out of reach of the monsters but also taking them both further away from the group.

Movement. Too much movement, too much sound, too much light. Too much everything, and his kit was gone, his kit wasn't there. Tail thrashing, he yowled, squirming. This was not his kit. He had to get back to him. The world around him spun, dizzying, and her arms seemed to fold in tighter around him with every move he made. 

His protests were less polite, desperation and stress making him forget to keep his claws in, and now the smell of blood joined the flurry of everything else. Unintentional, but nevertheless forceful, right up until the point that she fell. They both hit the ground hard, her weight nearly landing square on him. Monster looming above, he made to dash and felt her hand grab his tail at the base, agony shooting up his spine. He'd always been a patient cat, always been understanding of the humans he was with, but her hold on his tail on top of everything else broke the last shred of tolerance he had. Twisting, striking out, his teeth sank down into the offending palm, nails digging in with purpose. The message was as clear as he could have possibly made it, _let the fuck go._

A squeal filled with hurt, but she didn't yield, not until she'd had a proper hold on him round his middle. Back up on her feet and back to running, his sore tail batting against her side with his claws curled in an arm. He hissed, the taste of copper on his tongue, caught between wanting away from her and the startled realization of how hard he'd bitten. More blood now, blood in his fur, seeping toward the skin. 

That wasn't the only time she fell. When there weren't quite so many of them around, she made for the houses, pawing at unopened doors for the brief time she had before being forced to move on. At the third door, a monster stood there on the porch, unseen by her, his cry of warning voiced too late. They went over the edge of the porch, and oh, the kit screamed when they hit. It pierced his ears, made his head throb, let him know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something bad happened. She was slower to move, limping, clutching him to her chest tight enough now that he could hardly breathe.

Finally inside one of the houses, a series of walls to protect them from the endless abyss that was out there. As soon as the door closed she dropped him, and he shot off as fast as his legs allowed. 

He found a small, secluded place, a place no human could ever possibly enter. A place in the dark, a place to hide. 

His every nerve frayed beyond what he could stand, limbs shaking, he stayed where he was for a long, long time. For a while, he could hear the human wandering about, but then she went silent, and the sun above crept its way across the sky. The pounding of his heart and the tension throughout his core eased, tiny bits at a time. No chance at sleep in this state, he still lay on his side, flicking his tail in a constant rhythm, trying to push all that energy out of himself through the movement.

After a while, he tried to groom himself, but the blood had dried and matted in his fur. There were places he managed to clean up a bit, but the worst of them were so bad that his efforts only pulled at his skin. He'd have to wait for his human group to return so that they could clean it off for him. 

In the later part of the day, before it was quite sundown, he came out of hiding and went looking for the kit. He'd not heard a single noise from her in ages, and a part of him wondered if she was still there. Maybe she'd left and he'd not noticed. He'd never forgive her if she did, the worst thing she could have done after dragging him all the way out there was abandon him now, in an unfamiliar place and too far from his group.

But no, she was still there. In the room with the bed, she lay on her back on the floor. Unmoving.

The moment he stepped foot through the door, he was faced with that scent of blood, so much stronger than what was on himself. Dizzying, filling his nose. She was injured. Badly. Ears pressing downward, he padded toward her, going for her hand first. Checking the damage. Scratches up and down both arms, and a deep bite on her hand. Nasty, regrettable. He didn't necessarily feel at fault given the circumstances, but he was sorry that it happened. 

He nosed the wound, gently. It was bad, but not so bad as to account for the sheer amount he was smelling. 

Her shirt was off, wrapped tight around one leg. It was there he went to next, sniffing at the cloth to find that it was absolutely saturated, enough bloodloss to kill several cats. If she'd been anything smaller than a human, she'd have died several times over. 

...come to think of it, he wasn't so sure she was still alive.

With a sharp sense of dread, he turned from her leg and went up to her chest, putting his two front paws about her ribs. Soft, steady breath moved under him, and he let out a sigh of relief, backing down off of her. Tail wrapped around his legs, watching the kit where she lay. 

She was going to be in pain when she woke up. A great deal of it. His own kit got hurt all the time with his rough-housing, though of course he'd never been this bad off before. The wounds would heal, in time, the problem would be keeping her from exerting herself. Knowing kittens, she was sure to go looking for her mother as soon as she could. She'd not make it very far like this. As much as he wanted to go and get back to his group, go back and be with his own kit...they were going to need to stay where they were. 

And okay, a part of him was happy about the prospect of not having to go back out there so soon.

He couldn't quite see her breathing, and so he stepped up onto her, curled up on her chest to feel it rise and fall under him. Her rhythm was comforting, as was the steady pulse under her skin. A constant reminder that she was still there.

For a while, he dozed off and on, never quite going under. He felt it when she started to stir, his eyes opening at those little shifts that told him she'd be waking up soon. For her sake, he started to purr, not wanting her to feel she was alone. It mattered little to him that he wasn't her parent, she was still an injured kit, and he was going to care for her to the best of his ability. Her own eyes opened, shifted around the room, glazed, not entirely there. She murmured things to him, quiet vocalizations, a hand reaching to brush through his fur. Then she looked at her hand, the injury left there. That was when he started kneading, in part to distract her from it, in part to reassure her that it wasn't going to happen again.

She was still stronger than him, even at her weakest. With little effort at all, she picked him up off of her and put him down on the floor, preparing to get up. Bad idea. Terrible idea, and he meowed in warning, but she moved anyway. She moved and screeched, collapsing back to the ground, a fresh wave of copper in the air as wounds both seen and unseen reopened. He rubbed at her back, tried to push her over with his...less than effective weight, but this kit proved to be a determined one. She stood, got upright, and he kept his distance for fear of making her fall and hurting her more. Meowing, loud and urgent, but she still went wandering through the house on a bleeding leg. This wasn't helping her, this was making it worse. She needed to lay down and stay down until the injuries got a chance to heal.

Stubborn, relentless. A complete turnaround from the mild-mannered, timid girl he'd assumed her to be. She got water, put it in a place that was easy for her to access, and maybe he could have accepted that as good enough reason but she just kept going. A can of food placed down on the floor, unquestioningly for him, with an expectant look from her like she wanted him to eat it right then and there. When he refused, it was meant to send a message. _Don't worry about me. I'm fine._

But she didn't listen. She wasn't listening to him, and after she'd eaten her own can of food, she got back up again, returning with a bowl of water. Again, it was unquestioningly for him, and that was infuriating because he didn't need anything at the moment. Pointedly not touching it, still meowing, meowing until she lay down again. He got back up on her chest, not that he could've kept her down if she really wanted to move. She'd already proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Somewhere in all this mess, she'd pulled on a clean shirt. It made it harder to feel her heartbeat, but he could still feel her breathe.

He didn't stop purring until she'd fallen asleep.

He huffed, an ear twitching, tail-tip flexing back and fourth. Thankful that she was down but worried about all this strain she'd caused herself. Scourge didn't stay on her throughout the night. He got up, wandered a bit. Without a litterbox, he found a private place that she'd not likely find to make his dirt. He scratched at the couch, since there were no scratching posts. He did not touch any supply she'd left for him.

Returning to her, curling up on her chest, it was halfway though the night before he managed to go to sleep himself.

In the morning, when he awoke, the first thing he did was check her wounds. Granted, one night wasn't going to fix her, not with how badly she was hurt, but he was hoping they'd close enough that they wouldn't reopen again. With any luck, either his family or her mother would come to help him keep her down. 

Scourge sniffed at her palm first...and felt his stomach drop at what he smelled. Something sour. Bitter. Something that wasn't just blood. That same smell was at her leg, muted by the shirt wrapped around it by nevertheless there. Infection. 

She needed to rest now more than ever. And someone needed to come. Soon. The humans could fix this, he knew, but they couldn't do anything if they weren't there. Moving toward her hand, he tried to clean the wound by licking, but she flinched hard enough even in her sleep that he knew it wasn't going to work. A low noise in the back of her throat, soft shifting, her injured hand curled into a protective fist. He got up on her again, started up that purr. It wasn't long before she settled back down, went back to sleep.

Good. It was good. He stayed there. 

The kit could only sleep for so long. It seemed, she could only stay still for so long, too. She shifted uncomfortably, a faint tremor felt in her core, just under him. 

She kept moving. He protested, kept on her constantly, pressed on her and nagged at her throughout the process of nesting, of gathering every blanket throughout the house. Even to the point of locking him in the bathroom, for whatever reason her unpredictable human mind could fathom. By the time she let him return to her, she was exhausted, collapsed to the ground in an unmoving heap. Blankets up over her, wrapped about her with a pillow stuffed under her head.

Finally giving in to hunger, he ate during the second night there. Ate only half of the can, for fear that she'd feel the need to replace it. Drank some water. 

Checked her wounds, which were worse now. 

By the end of the second day, heat was starting to build up inside her. It seeped past his fur and into his skin, it made him uncomfortably hot, and yet she was buried under her blankets, shivering like she was out in the wintertime. Sleeping more, which was what he'd been trying to get her to do all along, but now all her silence did was put him on edge. He didn't dare touch any of the supplies she'd left him with, he didn't want her getting up again. 

On the third morning, she was downing water whenever she was awake, but no mater how much she took in her body seemed intent on sweating it out. Still eating, then going back to sleep right after. 

He didn't leave her again. Keeping right at her side, kneading, purring, everything he could think of to offer comfort. His thoughts returned to his group again, but moreso, he thought of her mother. There was still no doubt in him that they'd come again, but now he was starting to worry that they wouldn't get there in time. Worry that they might not be able to fix her at this point even if they did come. He didn't want to see the mother return only to find her kit either dead or mortally wounded.

The kit had been vocalizing at him the entire time, whenever she was awake. He got the feeling that she was soothed by the sound of her own voice. But...the way she'd been vocalizing had changed. At the beginning, she'd been tenacious. An unyielding wall, mewing brightly and briskly like nothing was wrong. Now her cries were softer, drawn out with stress. Mewling for help. Her arms went around him, clinging to him, voice breaking every few words.

And he hated being held, he hated it more than most things...but he recognized the need for contact. Leaned against her chest to let her know he wasn't going anywhere, and he only parted from her when he was sure she was under again, too asleep to care. Went to a spot closer to her stomach, sat by her with his ears back.

 _It's okay,_ he tried to convey. _It's alright. Just stay alive._

Another night. Another morning. Three days in that house and dangerously close to a fourth.

And he wasn't her father, he wasn't her caretaker, but she was a kit and she didn't deserve to feel like this. He lay beside her with his chin on her cheek, afraid to check her wounds again because he knew what he'd find.

It was then that he heard someone calling out from outside. The voice of her mother. 

He tore for the window, pushed his face behind the blinds, caught sight of her just as she was going through the door. Down from the window, he met her, meowing at her feet and turning to lead her toward her kit.


End file.
